On 27 August 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that the First Amendment protects private possession of AI-generated child sexual abuse material when no real child is depicted and the material remains in the home. The decision came in the case of Steven Anderegg of Wisconsin, who was charged in 2024 with using a popular AI image generator to create thousands of explicit images of children; the appeals court upheld dismissal of the possession charge while charges related to producing, distributing and allegedly transferring AI-generated images to a minor remain pending. Judge John Z. Lee, writing for the panel, urged the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit precedent in light of advances in artificial intelligence, noting that the court was bound by a 2002 Supreme Court decision in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition that rejected restrictions on sexually explicit depictions of fictional children when no actual child was involved in their creation, even though AI can now generate images virtually indistinguishable from material depicting the abuse of real children.
Precedent drawn from 2002 technology does not constrain real-time operational prevention in 2026. The ruling protects private possession; it does not protect distribution, production or transfer to a minor, which remain federal offences and represent the moments at which harm is transmitted. The anti-CSAM and anti-sextortion detection modules deployed by Guardii intercept AI-generated and photographic child sexual abuse material at the point of sharing, before it reaches the child, is transferred to a third party or leaves the sender's device as a completed distribution. Guardii monitors children's direct messages in real time across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other platforms, blocking hostile contact the moment it is initiated and surfacing the incident to a parent, school or law enforcement agency when a child is in immediate danger. The Seventh Circuit ruling highlights a constitutional gap in possession offences; it does not affect the enforceability of production, distribution and transfer charges, and it underscores the operational necessity of detection technology that prevents the material from being shared in the first place.
